Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Merry Christmas G Living friends. I thought today would be a great day to just take a break from city life, and watch a special documentary about a unusual family of elephants. This is a special documentary about a family of orphan elephants and the people who love them. The documentary looks beneath the hides and into the hearts and thinking of a unique wilderness family. A family of elephants who have come together as a new herd from a collection of American Circus or Zoo elephants, or orphan survivors of culls carried out in overcrowded African reserves. Today, Botswana’s Okavango Delta is their home. Yet some of the animals endured decades of lonely exile in zoos and circuses on other continents before one man’s vision transported them here.

Wildlife biologist Randall Jay Moore first came to know trained African circus elephants thirty years ago near his home in Oregon. He successfully shipped a pair back to Africa and spent a year teaching them how to live on their own in the wild. Since then he has rescued African elephants from confinement all over the world and returned them to their native soil. Ages six to forty, his herd’s thirteen orphans and exiles have been given a near miraculous second chance to live and wander in the wild realm of their birthright.

Can the Humans be stopped? Will we end a 200 million year run, just because we can? I know we are the dominate species on the planet, we prove that all the time. We love proving it. We are genius at making deadly devices large and small. Amazing robot aircraft which can kill entire villages at will. Nothing has ever lived, as deadly as us. But the real question is, do we have to be? Can’t we grow out of this? Do we have to kill everything and everyone? Do we have to turn everything into a weapon? Must the ocean it’s self be a weapon against the animals which call it home? For example, the Leatherback sea turtle has lived on this planet for 200 million years. They survived massive asteroid impacts, dinosaurs, sharks, and things we can’t even imagine. But as soon as we show up.. bye bye, it’s end of the ride for you Mr. Turtle.

Can we be stopped? Will we save the oceans from ourselves? Obviously, we can do anything, we just need to put our minds to work.

The seven species of modern sea turtles have changed very little from their ancient ancestors. They include: Green Turtle, Hawksbill Turtle, Kemp’s Ridley Turtle, Olive Ridley Turtle, Loggerhead Turtle, Flatback Turtle and the Leatherback Turtle. All seven species are listed by the IUCN Red List as either endangered or critically endangered.

One of the most threatened is the Leatherback the largest turtle and largest living reptile in the world, weighing up to 2,000 pounds. Leatherbacks differ from all other sea turtles in that they don’t have a hard bony shell. They get their name from their distinct carapace a thin layer of fragile skin overlaying tiny bone plates which has a leathery appearance. Due to their large body size, high oil content, and a counter-current heat exchange system, Leatherbacks have the ability to keep their core body temperature at about twenty-five degrees Celsius higher than most ocean waters. This allows them to tolerate colder water and migrate more expansively.

The itHouse is a design system developed by Taalman Koch that utilizes a series of components prefabricated off-site in order to better control the construction waste, labor, and quality of the finished product. Conceived as a small house with glass walls and open floor plan, the itHouse maximizes the relationship of the occupant to the surrounding landscape while minimizing the impact to delicate site conditions.

Energy efficiency is achieved in the itHouse through passive heating and cooling, utilizing site orientation and cross ventilation, radiant floor heating, hi-efficacy appliances & equipment and the use of solar photovoltaic & thermal panels.

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“The Architects” Radio Interview | Click to start playing

We recently stumbled across a very interesting Australian Green Architect Andrew Maynard. His interest is rethinking modern green designs with a look to the future.

Recently named in Wallpaper Magazine’s Architects Directory, an “annual guide to the world’s most innovative practices”, Andrew Maynard’s design practice is quickly becoming recognised as an emerging force on the architectural scene. Since Andrew Maynard Archtects was established in late 2002 it has been recognized internationally in media, awards and exhibitions for its unique body of built work and its experimental conceptual design polemics.

Architect Michelle Kaufmann in this project makes a wine using used tin cans. This maybe a little tacky, but it works. This would be a great project for kids. This is part of Michelle’s Green It Yourself Projects. Continue Reading / Additional Photos / Videos

With the Studio lit, furniture in place and The Real G up and running in Room 101… there’s only one thing left to do: Green the Roof! The roof is already pretty “G” with solar panels, a wind monitoring device (surveying the best location for our wind power) and water runoff going into our gardens. But there is more we can do?

In the old days, big city rooftop gardens were found mostly atop hotels or in the apartments of the elite few who could afford greener pastures in lands of concrete and glass shadows. But today’s rooftop garden industry has gone mainstream: now you, too, can take back the slates, tiles and shingles and exchange them for soil, bulbs and brush.

The units are genius: made of recycled materials, they interlock together and can be customized with whatever plants you want. While there are some structural requirements necessary to put them on your roof, they are a great addition to any space. Imagine going on Google Earth and seeing satellite photos of your neighborhood with green everywhere.

It’s good to look backwards once in a while and reflect on your journeys. This video interview with Professor Howard Zinn is one of the amazing things which have happen to us on our journey while developing G Living. This is a low quality version of the interview which I posted on youtube.com a few years ago. I will try and find the time to re-edit this interview and include the full speech Professor Zinn gave that night about the true cost of war.

Quest again shows us the details behind our world. In this show they look at the amazing world of Beetles. It’s been 150 years since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Yet his ideas remain as central to scientific exploration as ever. QUEST follows researchers who are still unlocking the mysteries of evolution, like entomologist David Kavanaugh, who predicted that a new beetle species would be found on the Trinity Alps. Find out if his prediction came true…

I don’t have a green angle to talk about Bjørg Jewellery, but I wanted to include this amazing line on G Living because of the spirit behind the jewellery is very “G”. I don’t know how jewellery is green or not, except for when it comes to the mining process. Most of that is very destructive, but how much metal could be in a ring. Your average so called green bike uses more metal than it would take to make hundreds of rings.

Bjørg was born on a dark winter-night in December 1966. She grew up in the arctic nature where the wild mountains meet the North Ice Ocean. With bright summer nights and winter days with darkness and colors of the Nordic light.

Bjørg was gifted with an energetic family with open minds, and was the youngest of four children. She was always encouraged to enjoy her creativity and she had an endless line of projects like the rest of her family.

“At one stage I think my parents felt we were too much with all our activities, all happening in the tiny living-room. They converted a small bedroom into a timeout zone, for themselves. My big brother had a tiny room where he developed photos. I was always fascinated with the magic of a blank paper turning into a piece of art.”

How green can you be if every time you head out to the backcountry for some hiking and camping you take along some normal nylon tent. Isn’t that what your thinking? I know it’s so sad. How dare you use a tent made from some thin nylon fabric. Don’t worry, you can feel better about your self by spending $350 on the Salt Creek 2, recycled tent. A winter cabin for two, you can haul in on your back. It weights just 6.4 pounds and takes less than 2 minute to fully assemble. It’s white because they also skipped dyeing it with toxic colors.

I actually do think this is a pretty cool tent with a very modern black and white color scheme. If you want to make your inner green camper happy for the holidays, buy them this cool tent and kick them out the door for a week and don’t let them back in. That is true love. You can buy the tent online at bigagnes.com

CNN highlights the growing trend of using all those wasted shipping containers as building blocks for new homes. CNN producers talk with Architect Peter De Maria, a previous guest on G Living’s Room101. Peter specializes in Container based homes here in Southern California. He is even building a Container home just down the street from the G Living studios.

Architects are designing modern homes from the millions of excess shipping containers that are piling up at the port of LA due to the US trade deficit with China. By using the steel shipping containers as building material, homes can save 50% of construction costs, while reducing the waste and blight caused by trying to store them.

My favorite photo from Chris Jordan’s show, Running the Numbers, is the first one I saw: Jet Trails. 11,000 white jet trails set against a soft blue sky gave off an ethereal feel while evoking a sense of childhood adventure and freedom something similar to staring at airplanes and cloud formations in the sky at seven. Impulsively, I wanted to melt into the photograph and experience flight, take me into it and away from the mess of life on earth.

But regardless of my reaction to the photo, Chris Jordan’s 11,000 jet trails are a visual representation of the number of commercial flights in the U.S. every eight hours. Of course, the real meaning behind the pretty picture is the effect these thousands of jet trails have on our environment. Jordan is reminding dreamers like me that the mess is also being created in air.